Really, someone needs to commence a campaign that aims to rescue the term “liberal” from the Liberal Party. It’s not liberal economically, democratically nor socially. At least, its leadership isn’t and it appears to be setting the agenda so neither is the Party.
Witness, right now Australia confronts three big issues. The first is the economy and Budget. To repair that we all know what is required:
- productivity directed reform;
- Budget reform that vitally includes reform to tax concessions including super and property;
- repair to the real exchange rate.
The Government is doing a few things around the edges in regulating foreign buying of property and seeking to lower labour costs, though this is not being done fairly or consistently but, rather, destructively via flooding Australia with 457 visas, and given the magnitude of the challenge, as well as degree of reform required, this effort is beyond paltry.
The second big issue is managing social change in a fraught world of globalisation breakdown. This includes the rise of terrorism, the re-emergence of sovereign conflicts and the proliferation of social fragmentation. The Government’s answer on each of these is an uber-conservative embrace of retrograde policy:
- over-egg the IS menace (not saying it does not exist nor should not be addressed nor that Q&A didn’t blunder) and generate fear as deeply and widely as possible;
- scream like a stuck pig at debate around these topics deploying the terms “treason”, “sedition” and “team Australia” far too easily;
- campaign for strategic agreements such the TPP which is economically backward and serves only the interests of ‘China containment’, clearly much more in the US strategic interest than in Australian interest;
- aim to hold back social progression wherever possible, most notably today in the PM’s resistance to gay marriage.
The third big issue is climate change and on that front Australia has never been more risible, backing dying coal to the hilt even to the point of accelerating its decline, trashing world leading carbon policy and undermining global policy efforts wherever possible.
There is little here that is new. Indeed, each of these policy challenges was managed under John Howard in a conservative way that made mainstream Australia feel safe while also allowing enough economic liberalism to flourish and make us prosperous, at least superficially.
But under a desperate Tony Abbott that conservative framing has morphed into a kind of soft fascism that sees big business (as opposed to markets) as one with government, next to zero productive economic reform as such, a debate that is held in the fist of corporate allies and terrible screeching every time it spills out, a wholesale denial of social difference, reason , evidence and science.
To me it’s got nothing to do with liberalism, which equates to social and economic freedom (within reason!). I can’t see why I have to work for some corporation because the Government says so. I can’t see why I am supposed to be economically free but I’m not allowed to do whatever I want in my own home. I can’t see why my children have to be sold down the river because some inept politician has no better idea for progress than the word “no”.
Tony Abbott’s platform may appeal to some narrow base of Liberal Party crazies but I put it to you that he is operating nowhere near the centre of the Australian polity.
